A little-known Belgian website offers consistently cheaper online airfares than its more famous British and American competitors, according to a report published this week.

The site, travelprice.be, recorded the lowest fare for 53 of 108 valid queries in the study by US online watchdog, Consumer Reports WebWatch in collaboration with Consumers International and several European consumer groups.

Travelprice's lowest return fare from London to Nice was $180.57, compared with the cheapest expedia.co.uk ticket price of $343.81. And while the Belgian site offered return fares from Brussels to Barcelona of $151.51, opodo.co.uk's cheapest flight cost $259.18.

Opodo was the highest placed British site, offering 13 lowest fares, which placed it sixth behind Travelprice, Airstop and BBLT in Belgium, and Opodo and Expedia in Germany.

"It shows it's well worth looking at sites in other countries," said the report's author, online market expert Bill McGee. "There are a couple of obstacles - language and currency conversion - and some of the ticketing rules can be arcane. But if you can address these issues, the German and Belgian sites performed very well - and not just on flights from their own countries."

He stressed that sites with large advertising and marketing budgets produced poor results compared to many of those that spend far less on publicity.

The research also revealed surprising discrepancies in fares between companies with sister sites in different countries, like Expedia and Opodo. On a return flight from Paris to Warsaw, travelocity.co.uk offered a lowest fare $231 cheaper than its sister site in America.

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